Destroyed Apple Products Become Work of Art

That’s what artist Michael Tompert does. He takes expensive Apple’s products and wrecks them with blowtorches, sledgehammers, handsaws and handguns. Then he snaps pictures of them and lo, these large-scale prints are now a colorful work of art.

“It’s an alternate viewpoint,” explained Tompert at a preview of his first gallery show, which opens in San Francisco last Friday. “They’re beautiful inside. They’re beautiful when you open them up.”

His methods of destruction varied by gadget. To destroy an iPhone 3G device he used a Heckler & Koch handgun to blow a hole through it. To obliterate a set of iPod Nanos, he placed the devices on a train track so that a locomotive would run over them. The most difficult product to wreck was the iPad -- "it's practically indestructible," Tompert said. He said the iPad withstood blows from a sledgehammer and other blunt tools. In the end, he used a soldering torch to heat the insides of the iPad until they started to boil and the device exploded.